A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret by Barbara Bradley Hagerty June 29, 2010

….Fallon set out to see whether anyone in his family possesses the brain of a serial killer. Because he has studied the brains of dozens of psychopaths, he knew precisely what to look for. To demonstrate, he opened his laptop and called up an image of a brain on his computer screen. “Here is a brain that’s not normal,” he says. There are patches of yellow and red. Then he points to another section of the brain, in the front part of the brain, just behind the eyes. “Look at that — there’s almost nothing here,” Fallon says. This is the orbital cortex, the area that Fallon and other scientists believe is involved with ethical behavior, moral decision-making and impulse control. “People with low activity [in the orbital cortex] are either free-wheeling types or sociopaths,” he says.

Fallon’s Scans
He’s clearly oversimplifying, but Fallon says the orbital cortex puts a brake on another part of the brain called the amygdala, which is involved with aggression and appetites. But in some people, there’s an imbalance — the orbital cortex isn’t doing its job — perhaps because the person had a brain injury or was born that way. “What’s left? What takes over?” he asks. “The area of the brain that drives your id-type behaviors, which is rage, violence, eating, sex, drinking.”

….Along with brain scans, Fallon also tested each family member’s DNA for genes that are associated with violence. He looked at 12 genes related to aggression and violence and zeroed in on the MAO-A gene (monoamine oxidase A). This gene, which has been the target of considerable research, is also known as the “warrior gene” because it regulates serotonin in the brain. Serotonin affects your mood — think Prozac — and many scientists believe that if you have a certain version of the warrior gene, your brain won’t respond to the calming effects of serotonin.

In Rare Memo, Vatican Rebukes Cardinal By RACHEL DONADIO June 28, 2010
ROME — The Vatican drew aside, for a brief and puzzling moment, the thick veil that covers its internal business. It issued an extraordinary communiqué on Monday chastising a powerful cardinal who had criticized another powerful cardinal — proof of a battle inside the Vatican walls that mirrors the anger over sexual abuse raging outside them….On its face, the communiqué is a public rebuke to Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna. In April, he had implicitly criticized Cardinal Angelo Sodano, 82, the current dean of the College of Cardinals and Pope John Paul II’s last secretary of state, for blocking an investigation into an Austrian archbishop accused in the mid-1990s of abusing minors. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/world/europe/29pope.html

June 29, 2010 Comments Off on US Supreme Court deals pedophilia blow for Vatican, human trafficking

also :
Pope causes outrage for condemning church abuse raids in Belgium
Church panel resigns to protest raid
The Catholic Church faces another scandal (Popes)

US Supreme Court deals pedophilia blow for Vatican (AFP) 6/28/10
WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal by the Vatican in a landmark case that opens the way for priests in the United States to stand trial for pedophilia. Allowing a federal appeals court ruling to stand, the decision means Vatican officials including theoretically Pope Benedict XVI could face questioning under oath related to a litany of child sex abuse cases. The Supreme Court effectively confirmed the decision of an appellate court to lift the Vatican’s immunity in the case of an alleged pedophile priest in the northwestern state of Oregon. The Oregon case, which was filed in 2002, does not directly address questions raised in a separate lawsuit in Kentucky alleging that US bishops are employees of the Holy See.http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j_isWYyYa91PA0oeM_aaVurBHDZQ

Pope causes outrage for condemning church abuse raids in Belgium – Victims groups say Vatican criticism of police shameful, as pontiff calls raid deplorable and demands church role in investigations 27 June 2010 Groups representing the victims of clerical abuse tonight expressed outrage after the pope criticised raids on the Catholic church by Belgian police. Last week, police raided the home of a retired bishop, opened the grave of at least one archbishop and detained Belgium’s nine current serving bishops as they met, seizing their mobile phones and only releasing them after nine hours. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/27/pope-causes-outrage-over-condemnation

Belgium church abuse probe body quits en masse 6/28/10 (AFP) – 13 hours ago
BRUSSELS — A Belgian Catholic Church-backed commission probing hundreds of reported cases of child abuse by priests announced its resignation en masse on Monday, after police raids that angered the pope….Thursday’s raids were prompted by new claims of child abuse by members of the Catholic Church in Belgium, one of the countries worst hit by recent revelations of paedophilia by priests in Europe and North America.
Police confiscated phones, computers and the archdiocese’s accounting system in a search for documents including any correspondence between alleged victims and the Catholic authorities….The Belgian Church was rocked in April when its longest-serving bishop, 73-year-old Roger Vangheluwe, resigned after admitting sexually abusing a boy for years.http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j-z7W98WVMD9DcgBiGsXZjcY9nrQ

Made in his own image: The Catholic Church faces another scandal – Joseph Ratzinger is having a terrible year. But as the Catholic Church faces yet another scandal, blame is falling on its most popular figure of modern times, Pope John Paul II, writes Peter Popham 28 June 2010
….Maciel was the founder of a highly conservative order called the Legion of Christ, but it has gradually emerged over the years – particularly since his death in 2008 – that he was much else besides: a morphine addict for decades who sexually abused his own seminarians, fathered several children by two mistresses, and then went on to abuse and rape those children. Yet Maciel was greatly favoured by John Paul II, remaining persona grata at the Vatican until nearly the end of his life, and Sodano, like other senior members of the Curia (though not Ratzinger) received large cash gifts from him. Sodano repaid Maciel generously by killing a Vatican investigation into his misdeeds in 1998.http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/faith/made-in-his-own-image-the-catholic-church-faces-another-scandal-2012093.html

June 28, 2010 Comments Off on Stern: Terrorism Expert No Longer in ‘Denial’ About Her Rape, clergy abuse

clergy abuse articles : Italy, Ireland, Belgium

Books of The Times – Violence Expert Visits Her Dark Past By DWIGHT GARNER
June 24, 2010 Jessica Stern is among the world’s experts on violence and evil, a woman who spends her time thinking about bad men and bad deeds. She has lectured at Harvard about terrorism and is the author of a respected book, “Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill” (2003). During the Clinton administration she was on the staff of the National Security Council….

“Denial” is Ms. Stern’s plainspoken and very raw account of why, long before 9/11, she was driven to study terrorism and to put herself repeatedly into danger as she flew around the world, like some scholarly twin of the former CNN war correspondent Christiane Amanpour, interviewing committed terrorists. Central among the reasons, it turns out, was her own experience of terror. On Oct. 1, 1973, when Ms. Stern was 15 and her sister 14, the two of them, alone in a suburban house in leafy Concord, Mass., were raped by a man who cut the house’s telephone lines before walking inside and leading them upstairs.

Ms. Stern describes that evening in brutal detail. It was a night that changed her and taught her a dire lesson: “Shame can be sexually transmitted.” The crime wasn’t properly investigated. The police didn’t believe her when she said the rapist was a stranger. Because her story and those of others were not publicized or taken seriously enough by the police, the same man was able to rape some 44 girls — an incredible, heart-collapsing number — from 1971 to 1973. “The entire community,” she writes, “was in denial.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/books/25book.html

Terrorism Expert No Longer in ‘Denial’ About Her Rape Andrea Stone Senior Washington Correspondent 6/25/10 WASHINGTON (June 22) — Jessica Stern, one of the world’s foremost authorities on terrorism, never made the connection between her chosen profession and the terror she suffered as a teenager. Stern was 15 and her sister Sara 14 when a blue-eyed stranger carrying a small handgun entered their home in Concord, Mass., on the evening of Oct. 1, 1973. The man threatened to kill them. Then he raped them. There was no one for the girls to turn to — their mother was dead, their father on a business trip in Europe, the baby sitter had left them alone. The police refused to believe the girls didn’t know the man. They were in denial. Worse, their father refused to cut short his trip to rush home.

A few months later — his daughters’ rapist still at large — he told police they had gotten over it. He was in denial. But it took more than 30 years for Stern to discover that she, too, was in denial….Stern knew from therapy that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a diagnosis she had denied for years….Stern was not content to confine herself to the personal. She talked to a fellow victim and met a veteran who was injured in Iraq and suffers from PTSD. While she doesn’t equate rape with being maimed by a roadside bomb — “I was not a victim of terrorism. That is much more serious and has a political element” — she was struck by how many symptoms she shared with the soldier….

Connecting her trauma to a wider circle, she wrote: Denial helps the bystander. We don’t want to know what the boys we send to Iraq have done to others out of terror, or what others have done to them. We would rather not know about terror or be confronted with evil. This is as true about Abu Ghraib as it is about personal assaults and more private crimes, the crimes that occur inside families. But the victim, too, cannot bear to believe. She may bury or disassociate from or disown her pain.http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/terrorism-expert-jessica-stern-no-longer-in-denial-about-her-rape/19524354

Abuse Loosens Church’s Culture of Silence in Italy
By RACHEL DONADIO June 26, 2010 ROME — One afternoon last month, a rare thing happened in Rome’s main courthouse: for perhaps the first time ever, an Italian bishop took the witness stand in the case of a priest accused of the sexual abuse of children.
Soon after, another rare thing happened. The leader of the Italian bishops’ conference acknowledged at a news conference that it was “possible” that bishops in Italy had covered up abuse, while his deputy said that in the past decade, 100 Italian priests had faced church trials in connection with the sexual abuse of minors.http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=132214&sectionid=351021820

Irish priest resigns over abuse case 27 Jun 2010 A priest in charge of protecting children in a rural diocese in Northern Ireland has been forced to resign over a case of child sex abuse filed against another priest under his authority. Earlier, an Irish Examiner report said Fr Bermingham in charge of the Diocese of Cloyne, in County Cork had received a note from a woman claiming abuse by a priest under his ministration. Bermingham had hushed up the matter and let his colleague know of the note before referring him to the police.

Bermingham said he had turned in the abuse statement which he received in May 2009 to the police and the Health Service Executive in the Irish Republic right away….This spring, a group of deaf men in Verona were granted a rare hearing on national television to denounce the priests they said serially molested them as children in a school for the deaf. “We just want justice,” said one of the men, Gianni Bisoli.http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=132214&sectionid=351021820

Pope denounces ‘deplorable’ raid on Belgian church – Raids come amid fresh claims of sex abuse in Catholic Church Agence France-Presse June 27, 2010
VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday accused Belgian police of “deplorable methods” for raiding a bishops’ meeting as part of a pedophilia probe, as Brussels said the Vatican was overreacting….Thursday’s raids came amid new claims of child abuse by members of the Catholic Church in Belgium, one of the countries rocked by recent revelations of pedophilia by priests in Europe and North America. http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Pope+denounces+deplorable+raid+Belgian+church/3208676/story.html

Wikipedia has been known for banning web pages that expose crimes against children. Many of its pages about child abuse crimes attempt to exonerate the perpetrators of these crimes, even when they were found guilty and lost all of their appeals. Important information showing the guilt of these criminals is deleted by editors vested in covering up information that backs the perpetrators’ guilt.http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/ritualabuse-us-blacklisted-by-wikipedia/

EXCLUSIVE: Pedophiles Find a Home on Wikipedia By Jana Winter June 25, 2010 FOXNews.com
Wikipedia has become home base for a loose worldwide network of pedophiles who are campaigning to spin the popular online encyclopedia in their favor and are trying to lure more people into their world, an investigation by FoxNews.com confirms.
Chat room posts show a clear effort by pedophiles to use Wikipedia, which can be accessed unfiltered in public schools across the country, to further their agenda. Message board posts often include links to specific Wikipedia articles that the participants say need to be edited to “normalize” pedophile behavior in the public eye and to recruit more pedophiles into their community.

“Pedophiles have campaigned to push their point of view that ‘pedophilia is OK and doesn’t hurt children’ on Wikipedia,” says Xavier Von Erck, director of the online pedophile watchdog organization Perverted Justice Foundation and Wikisposure.com, its offshoot project devoted to tracking pedophiles and pedophile activism on Wikipedia. “This has been a problem since Wikipedia started.”
In response to a request for comment on this story, Sue Gardner, executive director of Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s parent organization, said in a statement:
“Wikipedia has a long-held, zero-tolerance policy towards pedophilia or pedophilia advocacy and child pornography. The Wikimedia community is vigilant about identifying and deleting any such material. Any allegations to the contrary are outrageous and false.”

….The article on pedophilia, in its suggestions for further reading, suggests other Wikipedia pages edited by pedophiles, including “Child Sexuality,” and “NAMBLA,” a page about the North American Man/Boy Love Association. That page links directly to NAMBLA’s website, as do 25 other Wikipedia pages.
Wikipedia also has 32 external links to GirlChat, 14 to a Danish pro-pedophile website and 12 to BoyChat….
But an investigation by FoxNews.com shows that pedophiles are gaming this system, using their message boards to rally opposition and to sabotage attempts by other Wikipedia community members to rid the online encyclopedia of pro-pedophilia content.http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/06/25/exclusive-pedophiles-find-home-on-wikipedia/

Investigation Confirms Wikipedia-Pedophile Connection By James R. Marsh on June 25, 2010
According to a FOXNews.com exclusive investigation, inspired in part by this blog’s April 20th post Wikipedophilia….
On May 7, FoxNews.com reported exclusively that Wales had personally deleted many of the images from Wikimedia’s servers, and that he’d ordered that thousands more be purged. Now many of those images have been restored to their original web pages.http://www.childlaw.us/2010/06/investigation-confirms-wikiped.html

If you are a survivor of extreme child abuse or ritual abuse, please consider attending this conference. If you are unable to attend, please consider making a donation to help others that cannot afford to attend.

Conference Goals
– To help stop future occurrences of ritual abuse
– To help survivors of ritual abuse
– To name the groups that have participated in alleged illegal activities
– To unite those working to stop ritual abuse

Conference Schedule
There will be a small get together, deli dinner, dessert and early registration for pre-registered attendees only, on August 6, Friday evening. The conference will be all day on Saturday August 7 and Sunday August 8. Please check our conference home page for the latest conference schedule information. Some presentations will also be recorded.

Speakers and Biographies
Please note: Listing of these speakers does not necessarily constitute our endorsement of them. They are speaking at our conference for educational value only and some may be heavy for survivors. Listening to the speakers at the conference may or may not help your recovery process, so use caution when listening to any speaker or contacting any resource mentioned in this brochure. These descriptions may be heavy for survivors to read.

Neil Brick is a survivor of Masonic based Ritual Abuse and MK-ULTRA. He is the editor of S.M.A.R.T. – A Ritual Abuse Newsletter. His topics are: Fighting the Spin : The Truth about Child Abuse Cases and The Move from Blame the Victim to Blame the Helper.

Nick Bryant‘s writing has recurrently focused on the plight of disadvantaged children in the United States, and he’s been published in numerous national journals, including the Journal of Professional Ethics, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, and Journal of School Health. He is the co-author of America’s Children: Triumph of Tragedy, addressing the medical and developmental problems of lower socioeconomic children in America. His topic is: Lessons learned from Franklin

Carmen Yana Holiday is a survivor of extreme domestic violence, human trafficking, child pornography, ritual abuse-torture and mind control. She has been an advocate for other survivors since 2001, developing and facilitating trauma recovery workshops and presenting as a survivor of RA-MC for several organizations. Her topic is: Survivors of Extreme Abuse: The Awful Rowing Toward Social Emancipation

Lynn Schirmer is an artist and survivor of ritual abuse-torture and trauma based mind control. She mounts frequent exhibits where she engages audiences about the reality of extreme abuse and tax funded exploitation of children and adults. Her work has been exhibited the US and France. Her topic is: Art & Activism: Finding Effective Ways to Tell

Mary Keats RN BA wife, mother, grandmother, working in social services, is a survivor of Ritual Abuse Torture. She is a spiritual person who enjoys life to the fullest. Her energy and enthusiasm are infectious. She refuses to be muzzled, decided early on in her recovery to break the silence, so others could be helped. Her topic is: Hope after the Darkness

Wanda Karriker, Ph.D. is a retired psychologist who spent a career working with survivors of extreme abuse. She is author of the novel, “Morning, Come Quickly,” co-developer of the Extreme Abuse Survey Project and former editor of Survivorship. Her topic is: The Ritual Abuse Controversy: A Personal Perspective.

Julaine has spent over 21 years on this journey. As the daughter of a career military man, working in “intelligence”, she was turned over for government experimentation prior to the formal designations like Artichoke and MKUltra. A former polyfragmented woman, she has employed many approaches and therapies to heal, and is here today to talk about things she learned as she walked this journey. Her topic is: Looking Back: Lessons from the Healing Journey

Suzie Burke, R.N., Ph.D. is the pen name of a real woman who is a registered nurse and licensed professional counselor with a doctorate in psychology. Suzie is the author of “Wholeness, my healing journey from ritual abuse.” Her 10-year path to recovery was a result of a savvy counselor, her own determination not to let her perpetrators “win,” plus a family that never wavered. Suzie Burke is now thriving. Info on her and her book is at http://www.suzieburke.com Her topic is: Wholeness: My healing journey from ritual abuse, and what you can learn from it.

Dr. Lacter is a clinical psychologist in San Diego, California, USA, for 24 years and specializes in the treatment of dissociative disorders and ritual abuse and mind control trauma in both children and adults. She has a number of published chapters in edited books on the subjects of ritual abuse and mind control. Her website is http://www.endritualabuse.org/

S.M.A.R.T. 2010 Conference Schedule
(Please note : this schedule may be subject to change. Please write us for the latest schedule.)

June 25, 2010 Comments Off on Man Who Claims To Be Son Of Priest Sues Legionaries Of Christ

Man Who Claims To Be Son Of Priest Sues Legionaries Of Christ By DAVID OWENS June 22, 2010 The Legionaries of Christ and the estate of the priest who once led the Roman Catholic order, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, are being sued by a man who says he is one of several children whom Degollado fathered. The lawsuit, brought in state court by New Haven attorney Joel T. Faxon on behalf of Jose Raul Gonzalez Lara, 30, of Mexico, accuses Degollado of repeatedly sexually molesting Lara….The Vatican last month ordered an overhaul of the Legionaries after an investigation into decades of sexual abuse complaints against Degollado and alleged efforts to cover up the crimes. Degollado engaged in “very serious and objectively immoral behavior,” the Vatican said, and led “a life devoid of scruple and of genuine religious sentiment.” That conduct included fathering at least one child and sexually molesting boys and seminarians into the 1990s. Degollado died in 2008 at age 87.

Lara’s mother, Blanca Gutierrez Lara, gave birth to two children with Degollado, who used the alias Raul Rivas, according to the lawsuit. The biological sons — and another boy whom Degollado did not father — claim that Degollado sexually abused them, according to a report in the National Catholic Reporter. Only Lara is bringing a suit, however….Although seminarians and others urged Pope John Paul II to investigate Degollado and the Legionaries of Christ for abuse, the pope instead praised Degollado in 1994 as “an efficacious guide to youth.”

Pope Benedict XVI appointed a special envoy and commission to oversee “purification” of the order and to deal “sincerely with all those who, within and outside the Legion, were victims of sexual abuse and of the power system devised by the founder.” Critics have described the order as secretive, controlling and cult-like, with seminarians largely cut off from contact with their families and the outside world….Jim Fair, a spokesman for the Legionaries of Christ, said the order would have no comment on the lawsuit. He did say that Lara’s claim that he is Degollado’s son seems credible.http:/www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-legionaries-of-christ-sued-0622-20100621,0,5181731.story

Deposition paints an unflattering portrait of Mahony – Exchanges between attorney and cardinal about priest convicted of molestation reveal a failure to take responsibility. By Steve Lopez June 20, 2010…

The deposition involved former priest Michael Baker, who is now serving a 10-year sentence for molestation. After he confessed to Mahony in 1986 that he had molested two boys, Mahony sent him to one of the drive-through “treatment” centers used by the church back then. After that, the archdiocese shuffled Baker around to different parishes — some with elementary schools. Despite reports that Baker continued to have contact with minors in violation of church orders, the archdiocese did nothing to stop the priest, who went on to molest other kids. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopezcolumn-20100620-column,0,4523336.column